How to Re-Discover Your Inspiration

By Katarina Matiasovska

The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes. — Agatha Christie

As Agatha Christie once suggested, the aha! moment can happen in the most unusual places. Indeed, inspiration is a strange and unpredictable beast. It seems like the more we try to chase it, the more elusive it becomes.

Professionals from all walks of life, whether they are entrepreneurs in quest of fresh ideas, marketers looking for the catchiest phrases or chefs bringing to life new culinary creations, all need to keep themselves inspired, but it’s not always as easy as we’d like. When university deadlines are bearing down on you, it can be easy to forget how to enjoy your work and apply a creative spark to your projects. Next time inspiration deserts you, here’s what to do.

When in doubt, read. Anything. Because inspiration can lie everywhere. As long as it has words, it’s a gateway to other worlds, new associations and your own unique interpretations of it all.

A famous avid reader? Warren Buffett, who gives his reading habits credit for his mega success. He once advised people: “Read 500 pages like this every day…That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”

Warren Buffett has a point. Not many people read 500 pages a day, and even fewer will take it to the extreme and read 600 to 1000 pages per day, like he used to do at the beginning of his investing career. (You have to wonder if he ever went outside to get some fresh air?)

It’s been proven that moving your physical body changes your mental landscape. So instead of sitting on a chair when tackling an inspiration drought, take a break and walk, run, jump or dance it out instead.

Justin Rhodes, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, sheds some light on why the brain-exercise connection is so touted, saying that exercise causes “blood pressure and blood flow [to] increase everywhere in the body, including the brain. More blood means more energy and oxygen, which makes our brain perform better.”

Bearing this in mind, sitting in the same chair all day in the library can clearly act like a bottleneck for inspiration, so if you want your creative juices to flow freely, get outside and get moving.